CES: LG bringing YouTube videos to its Blu-ray players

LG Electronics has announced it is bringing video-on-demand to its Blu-ray Disc players through streaming video deals it has inked with major Web sites.

The company announced deals with CinemaNow and YouTube to stream video directly to its network-connected Blu-ray Disc players.

The alliances should make it easier to whet consumers’ increasing appetite for online content, LG said.

The announcement comes ahead of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where LG will display its new Internet-connected Blu-ray players with streaming content. CES will be held in Las Vegas between January 8 and 11.

Users will be able to retrieve videos from YouTube through the players, including home and instructional content. From CinemaNow, users will be able to instantly rent a film from a library of 14,000 movies. The feature will be available in the first half of 2009, LG said. [ed. -- There is no indication whether the service will be available to Australians, but odds are that it won't; we'll let you know if by some stroke of luck this changes].

Netflix is already offering access to streaming movies from its library to owners of an existing LG network-linked Blu-ray Disc player, the BD300, under a deal signed with LG in 2008.

This feature adds versatility to the Blu-ray Disc player, which beat HD DVD in a media format battle but is seeing slow growth. Blu-ray is now seeing a threat from streaming media as the Internet shapes the way multimedia is delivered to home entertainment devices.